Introducing The Shechina
It was early Monday morning and the Kundalini erupted in my sleep. I became paralysed and the energy ripped through my brain painfully. Once I consciously took control of the breath the active Kundalini disappeared but like a true serpent biting its human foe, it slithered away into nothingness and I was left alone to cope with the trauma. It is apparent from past Kundalini experiences that when pain in the brain is felt, then the perspective I have of myself before an eruption is different to the perspective afterward. The experience I had on Monday expands my overall perspective on the energies that animate life and how they operate.In the next five days I thought long and hard about many aspects and events in my life. I went over events and experiences rapidly and also thought about irrelevant issues. My brain had been shifted into overdrive ever since the eruption. Unlike other previous painful experiences with the Kundalini at least my thoughts hadn’t become obsessive, self-deprivating, or self-deprecating. Such thought patterns represent a furious ego unable to come to terms with a new, more 'spiritually aware' way of seeing the world, that is, seeing the body, self, ego, unconscious, physical environment, and soul as independent- yet also interconnected entities. So on monday morning the pain in my brain came from the destruction of energy blockages which had previously minimised the flow of masculine energy entering my body through the top of my head, blockages which stifled spiritual awareness.
This new flow of energy entering the head was tremendous and was the cause of my relentless thinking. I could break the train of thought if I watched my breath but in practice this meant gasping for air like I had just risen from the ocean floor. This downward energy affected my arms and they felt stiffened. Strangely, the lower parts of my body had switched off and had lost much tactility.
"Oh no." I foresaw myself setting a world record for the most amount of thoughts in a single person’s lifetime!
I tried everything to restore my old self. I prayed intensely to God, emailed a yogi, and read a book by the important rabbi named Schneerson which gave an interpretation of the Torah, a holy Jewish scripture. I also got advice from mum, dad, and even a clairvoyant. The clairvoyant reminded me that the energy of the Universe was only the one type and we agreed wholeheartedly that this energy was God. She suggested I stand outside and imagine the one type of energy flowing down taking my negative energy into the earth and then one type of positive energy flowing back up. She also stressed I must be proud of my Jewishness and not to mix with unwholesome folk. Generally her channel wasn’t perfectly clear so her advice and words seemed contextually irrelevant to my immediate problems. Later I found out in fact they were relevant. Also, a significant thing in Schneerson's book was his notion that a person is the creation of its mother, father, and in the middle God but I didn't know quite what he meant.
Anyway I was getting fed up. It was early Friday morning and after a soul-wrenching, belief-shattering, mind-popping, and body-aching week, all I wanted was to go into a deep sleep and not simply lie awake like a mad professor. I called Mum. She said intuitively and virtually instantaneously “take a sleeping pill.” I told her it would be useless but I trusted her judgement.
I waited, thinking like a runaway train between my gasps for air, hoping the pill would knock me out. I became so deeply entrenched in my thoughts that I forgot who and where I was. Suddenly, I was interrupted by a faint shout from the depths of my soul:
"Wake up Kundalini", yelled out a voice identical to my own.
Not surprisingly the Kundalini woke up, but not like a wild serpent but instead like that of a wave gently finishing up its journey onto a sandy beach. The flow emanated from my lower spine and was creeping its way into my brain.
"OH NO."
I thought that my whole downward flow was reversing and the opposite state would now occur. This 'upward' state feels as though every cell is being sucked upwards as though the direction of gravity has switched. I was about to become the totally thoughtless observer of my own own insomnia. I was wrong for my higher intelligence had other plans for me.
Something tweaked, perhaps it was some kind of divine intervention, or maybe even Schneerson was involved. I Immediately had the inspiration to start chanting “Shechina.” Shechina is the Hebrew word for the presence of the feminine divine. After repeating this word a few times the new Kundalini upwards flow eased back into a Shechina-type upwards flow by perfectly matching the downwards flow that I had literally been 'up-to-my-shoulders’ in all week. The result was that my lower body tactility switched back on, then after a few thoughts passed there was mental silence . . . . then thoughts . . . . then silence . . . . .YES normal thought patterns!!! What had happened is that by chanting “Shechina” I had unknowingly asked for the two opposing energies that animate the human being to find the equilibrium again which had been missing all week. That equilibrium felt physically as though it was taking place in the heart as the so called 'mystical union'. Ecstasy was yielded simply from feeling balanced, normal, and gaining new insight about how these masculine and feminine energies that power the universe operate in the human body. That insight vanquished the many fears I had associated with the 'upward' state. So then after I reverted back to the brilliant mundane, I lay on my pillow in praise and awe of G-d.
This mystical union is occurring in everybody continuously and as you read this sentence I invite you to tap into this ecstasy of simply being alive.
It was no accident that my physical mother told me to take the sleeping pill for she instrumented my discovery of the metaphysical mother, the Shechina. The name that one gives the divine feminine force is important, especially to me. If I want to relate to the Yogic experience I will use 'Kundalini' for here the divine feminine force enters sushumna to create the experience of samadhi, and eventually “liberation” from samskaras, and maya. If I want to relate to the Jewish experience I will use 'Shechina' for here the divine feminine force is a crucial balancing mechanism and a manifestation of the Creator. Strictly speaking there are no names for this divine feminine force when it gives rise to the multitude of other experiences that many people may enjoy . . . . or suffer. In the 'psycho- snake' experience it is neither Kundalini or Shechina, it is simply no pain no gain!
One must not overlook what the clairvoyant stated in that the two forces come from the one universal energy being God. I doubt Rabbi Schneerson would argue with this statement because I now understand what he meant about human beings. Not only in a physical sense is a human is the creation of a mother, a father, and G-d, but in a metaphysical sense too. The energy of a soul existing in a human body is the product of a sustained feminine force, the one divine mother called Shechina, and also its counterpart masculine force, the one divine father called Keter. So fear not the energies that are us! We can allow them to bring us into harmony and in doing so it can provide us with a quick fix in certain crises!
© Copyright A.D. 2006